This is a blog describing some thoughts about issues related to event processing and thoughts related to my current role. It is written by Opher Etzion and reflects the author's own opinions

Friday, September 25, 2009

More on what's next for EPTS

This is the logo of the event processing symposium, the building in the picture is opposite the conference's site. Back home now, after the event processing symposium and also co-located meeting of the EASSy consortium that is submitting a proposal for the EU R&D program.

This is a good time also to summarize the output of the symposium on the question what's next to EPTS. Earlier today this summary was sent to the EPTS members.

The main agreed goal of the "next steps" is Accelerating the activities and impact of EPTS, in order to do it, we'll need more people to enter the circle of activities in EPTS, some of the participants in the symposium, who have not been active so far, expressed willingness to participate in activities, and we are, as always, calling on more people to join.

Here are the activities, classified according to the activity area.

1. Existing working groups:

1.1. GlossaryThere has been a discussion that included a conference call.It was agreed that all comments and proposals from other work groups about terms in the glossary should be posted on the members wiki during the next month, after that time the glossary team will consider all comments and propose a revised version.

1.2 Use CasesThe use cases work group will publish its questionnaire and solicit use cases, also need to think of motivation to provide these use cases (see proposal on awards).

1.3 Language AnalysisThe language analysis work group was asked to take the languages dimensions to the next level, so languages can be classified based on criteria. Also it will collect patterns and devise a library of patterns.

1.4 Reference ArchitectureThe reference architecture work group will continue its work to publish the reference architecture(s) of event processing.

1.5 InteroperabilityThis workgroup has been delayed. During the meeting it was re-established and will start activities.

There has been a general agreement that the workgroups should accelerate their activities; it was proposed that deliverables will be linked to external commitments (e.g. presentation/tutorials in external conferences) so deadlines will be established.

2. New proposed workgroups

Four new workgroups have been proposed. Each one has assigned a leader to write charter that will be put to a vote by all members:

2.1. Awards workgroups.

Awards will increase visibility, provide motivation for people to report various things (e.g. use cases) and establish EPTS as a recognized authority. Types of possible awards:Research innovation award – given to researcher, Application innovation award - given to customer.

2.2. ROI

It was proposed that EPTS will publish a document about ROI of event processing in general and in different domains and industries; this will be used as a source for educating customers in a manner that is independent of a specific product.

2.3 EPTS promotion

It is proposed to promote the EPTS brand and awareness to its activities using website, webinars, white papers, press releases, participating in various conferences and more. This workgroup will recommend and coordinate these promotion activities.

2.4. Collecting Datasets.

Researchers require datasets for various research activities. This workgroup will help collecting these data sets, and makes EPTS as source of data sets repository.

3. Other activities

3.1 Coordination among work groups.

The issue of coordination among workgroups has been raised; the steering committee will work with the work group leaders to determine best way to act.

3.2. Grand challenges

There has been initial discussion on grand challenges. This discussion will continue on the members' Wiki. The Dagstuhl seminar in May 2010 will deal with the grand challenges issue.

3.3. Reach out to adjacent communities:

EPTS will continue to trace and participate in joint activities with the BPM, IT event management and robotics communities.

3.4. Association with DEBS

It was agreed to offer the DEBS steering committee to include EPTS as "in cooperation with" on DEBS website.

Hi Hans. You are right, there has been a discussion about it in the Trento meeting, and since one of the EPTS charter items is to educate the customers about event processsing, we'll have to go also to the business side.